Long-time User Research Articles

The Francis Skaryna Library as Experienced by a Long-Time User

Abstract This article presents a personal view of the Francis Skaryna Library and Museum in London from its early days to the present, reflecting its ups and downs, as well as some of its affiliations like the Anglo-Belarusian Society and the Association of Belarusians in Great Britain, and in later years fruitful connections with the British Library and the National Library of Belarus. It concentrates on a few of the many interesting and distinguished people who have been associated with the Francis Skaryna Library and Museum over the years, including clerics, prominent and younger writers from Britain and abroad, not least Belarus, numerous scholars and many other enthusiasts for a small country with its books (old and new), journals, manuscripts, music and many artefacts. By common consent, it is an unmatched source of primary and secondary materials for research, as well as a beacon of stability and culture in the West during the period since World War II that has been so turbulent in Belarus itself.

FLAG: Flexible, Accurate, and Long-Time User Load Prediction in Large-Scale WiFi System Using Deep RNN

In this article, we propose <italic xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">FLAG</i> for flexible, accurate, and long-time user load prediction in a large-scale WiFi system. <italic xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">FLAG</i> enables prediction customization in both time granularity and prediction length. Under an operating WiFi system with more than 7000 APs, a reference implementation of <italic xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">FLAG</i> is developed, which consists of three major components. For <italic xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">data acquisition</i> , we process 25 074 733 association records contributed by 55 809 users, to extract the ground truth of AP-level user load. For <italic xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">feature extraction</i> , we perform a comprehensive data analytics to mine vital features to label each AP, which are extracted and classified into three categories, i.e., individual features, spatial features, and temporal features. For the <italic xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">model design</i> , we design a deep recurrent neural network (RNN) model, which contains two separate RNNs, i.e., the encoder RNN and decoder RNN. Particularly, the sequential feature vectors are injected into the encoder RNN to learn the “semantic” information, based on which the decoder RNN conducts sequential AP-level predictions. As the semantic vector is injected for each time step prediction, it can effectively reduce the accumulated prediction errors, which enable long period of time predictions. Real data set-based experiments corroborate the efficacy of <italic xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">FLAG</i> .

Happy 50th Anniversary, Lithium Clinics: The Perspective of a Long-Time User.

Happy 50th Anniversary, Lithium Clinics: The Perspective of a Long-Time User.

Readers Write: March 2009

Beauty is in the eyes of the beholder. I have been a long-time user of the Connected Mathematics Project materials and have literally worked every problem offered for all three grade levels so as to anticipate how the problem might play out in the classroom. My knowledge of mathematics and teaching has grown by leaps and bounds from solving each problem; from studying the teacher editions, in themselves a wealth of support; and by working with colleagues and students. I enter my classroom believing anything can happen if I let it. I have seen students at work on worthwhile mathematical tasks in my own classroom, as well as the classrooms of many others. My stories are many, my enthusiasm abounds, and my belief that every child can learn is steadfast.

Independent Living—In The Jungle Or The Zoo?

I first met Drew Batavia in 1989 when I was a long-term care analyst for the Pepper Commission, a congressional commission charged with exploring health and long-term care reform options that would meet the needs of people of all ages. Our paths crossed again in 1992 when I was leading a work group to design the long-term care component of President Clinton’s health care reform initiative. Drew was one of several disability advocates and experts who advised our group on how to incorporate consumer-directed personal assistance services into our proposed national home and community-based care program. Batavia combined his advocacy and analytical skills with his personal experience as a long-time user of personal care attendants to inform his positions on how to finance and implement an independent-living model for long-term care. He applied these same skills to the writing of this book. Although the independent living concept, the movement, and specific programs have received increasing attention in the academic and policy literature over the past decade, this book represents the first comprehensive review of the evolution of this approach, the nature and scope of programs domestically and internationally, how this model compares with other approaches, and the potential role of this model in the future of long-term care reform. The author aptly borrows from the health economist Victor Fuchs in his introductory description of the current state of long-term care as the “jungle vs. the zoo” for people with disabilities. Batavia highlights the trade-offs between freedom and security, noting that “nowhere are they more stark than in the area of long-term care” (p. 13). He arrays the current range of long-term care settings and providers along a freedom–security continuum with nursing home at one extreme and cash assistance—the ultimate in independent living and consumer direction—at the other. Chapter 3 provides a very useful chronology of the development and maturation of the independent living model, from its roots in the civil rights and consumer rights movements, the pressure to deinstitutionalize people with mental illness and mental retardation, the efforts to “normalize” people with disabilities (including subjecting them to the risks of everyday life), and more recent initiatives to apply the independent-living approach to services for the elderly. This overview emphasizes the importance of grassroots campaigns and how they influenced legislative, judicial, and administrative decisions to foster and encourage independent living options for people with disabilities. One minor gap in Batavia’s chronology is his failure to identify the self-determination movement for people with mental retardation and developmental disabilities as a precursor to the maturation of the independent-living concept. Self-determination programs provide an important subgroup of people with disabilities with budgets and the tools to make important decisions about how they live their lives and use resources to meet their needs. The success of this approach in the mental retardation community has lent credence to the B o o k R e v i e w s

HIDING IN THE BACKGROUND

IMAGINE HOW DISAPPOINTING IT would be to learn that you've unintentionally been throwing away something valuable because it was tucked inside something else and you didn't know it was there—like free movie tickets hiding in a newspaper section that you never read. How much worse would it be to discover that something you've been discarding for years—deliberately—is valuable? That's exactly what's been happening in X-ray absorption studies for quite some time, according to Diederik C. (Diek) Koningsberger. For 25 years I've been throwing away useful data, he says. We've all been doing it. Fortunately, unlike the theater tickets, the lost data can be retrieved. Recently, scientists have begun extracting chemically significant information from data that's ordinarily overlooked and using it to understand the effect of materials used to support precious-metal catalysts. A longtime user of X-ray absorption methods to study catalytic materials, Koningsberger, a professor of inorganic chemistry and catalysis ...

Bullard Laryngoscope

To the Editor: As a long-time user, advocate, and teacher of the Bullard[trade mark sign] laryngoscope (Circon Corporation, Stamford, CT), I (ETC) was surprised to read the case report by Habibi et al. [1] alleging that a blade extender could be easily dislodged by incidental contact with the patients teeth during removal of the laryngoscope from the mouth. Based on their experience, they further recommend the cautious use of the Bullard[trade mark sign] laryngoscope in patients with a limited mouth opening, a patient group for whom many have found the Bullard[trade mark sign] laryngoscope to be ideally suited. I have been very impressed over the years at the retention strength of the connection between the extender and the laryngoscope blade, provided that the extender is appropriately seated and secured. After reading Habibi et al.'s article, I decided to measure the strength of the connection. We mounted a spring scale (Hanson, Shubuta, MS) to a vise. We then measured the retention strength of the connection by determining the applied force (reflected as weight in kilograms), which was necessary to separate the extender from the blade. We used our two Bullard[trade mark sign] laryngoscopes and attached five different blade extenders, both new and previously used, to each of the laryngoscopes. Each extender blade combination was tested twice, and a mean force for disconnection was determined. The mean +/- SEM force necessary to separate the connection was 10.5 +/- 1.0 kg (23.9 +/- 2.3 lb). There was a slight difference in the force required when comparing the used extenders (9.9 +/- 0.36 kg) with the new ones (10.86 +/- 0.9 kg), but the difference did not reach significance (P = 0.58), nor is it likely to be clinically important. Our experiment validated our confidence in the extender laryngoscope connection, demonstrating that considerable force must be applied to separate the extender from the blade. We find it difficult to accept that the forces demonstrably necessary to separate an extender from the Bullard[trade mark sign] laryngoscope blade could ever be achieved during anything remotely resembling normal use. Further, it suggests that human error, rather than technical failure, contributed to both events reported by Habibi et al. Finally, we believe that the review process should have insisted on an objective forensic assessment of the incident, similar to what we conducted, to support the allegation of technical failure. Had this been done, the authors would likely have come to a different conclusion regarding the causes of the disconnection. Their published caution would have further emphasized the importance of training in the proper use of the Bullard[trade mark sign] laryngoscope, rather than the unsupported and likely invalid caveat regarding technical failure. Edward T. Crosby, MD* Mark J. Cleland, BMET[dagger] Departments of *Anesthesiology and [dagger]Biomedical Engineering; Ottawa Hospital-General Site; University of Ottawa; Ottawa, Ontario, Canada K1H 8L6

The Index to American Botanical Literature-A Brief History

WARE, STEWART (College of William and Mary, Williamsburg, VA 23187). The to American Botanical Literature-A Brief History. J. Bot. Soc. 124:262-264. 1997-At the end of 1995 the Bulletin of the Botanical Club ceased publishing the to American Botanical Literature, a listing of recent publications in plant biology that were of potential interest to its readers. This ended 110 years of inclusion of the Index in the issues of the Bulletin. William R. Buck, a former compiler of the Index for the Botanical Club, has published an excellent short history of the Index in the journal Brittonia (48: 120-123, 1996) from the perspective of a compiler. In contrast, the present paper is written from the perspective of a long-time user of the Index, both in the regular issues of the Bulletin and in the form of the Torrey Card Index.

Gastrointestinal Hemorrhage from an Internal Jugular Abscess in an Intravenous Drug Addict

The usual death of a long-time heroin user is described. The significance of this case is that death occurred suddenly and unexpectedly during incarceration. In the United States, such deaths are frequently followed by lawsuits against the prison authorities. Drug abuse can cause death in many varied ways.